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John Morgan - Morgan & Morgan Founder ($2B/Year Revenue) | Billionaire Lawyer Says He Shouldn't Be Rich · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  You're a billionaire who says he got lucky. Why does that make people uncomfortable? Well, it makes some people uncomfortable. The people who it mainly makes uncomfortable are the people who did well and believe it was all them. It doesn't make the people who didn't do well uncomfortable at all because they just say, he won the lottery, no big deal.
• 0:19
  Today's guest is John Morgan, entrepreneur, attorney, best-selling author, and founder of Morgan & Morgan. From building America's largest personal injury law firm to becoming one of the country's most influential business leaders, he has spent decades challenging conventional thinking. In this conversation, he shares why luck, resilience, and the choices you make can shape the course of your life. Even the worst possible thing, a lot of how life turns out is how you react and respond to those events.
• 0:45
  Luck doesn't just happen. Luck happens when you're looking for opportunity. Tim's horrible luck. I mean, the worst luck you could imagine. But that bad luck turned out to be my whole life's work because I got inside of there and saw the system. And that moment I was like, you know what, one day I'm going to come back and I'm going to be the voice for the Tim's of the world.
• 1:13
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• 2:25
  So John, you're a billionaire who says he got lucky. Why does that make people uncomfortable? Well, it makes some people uncomfortable. The people who it mainly makes uncomfortable are the people who did well and believe it was all them. It doesn't make the people who didn't do well uncomfortable at all because they just say he won the lottery. No big deal. It's like an excuse. Yeah.
• 2:54
  Yeah, it's an excuse. But for people who are very successful, they believe that they had special talents, that they worked harder than everybody else, that they made smarter decisions than everybody else, that it was all them. And if you strip them naked and put them in New York City, they'll do it again. They really believe that.
• 3:17
  And it's so funny because a lot of people ask me, like, what's the personality trait of the people that are successful? You know, all the people that sit in that chair and come on the show. And it's exactly what you just described. It's the belief that they can do it again and again and again and again. It's like this absolute certainty. I'm more curious why you don't believe that.
• 3:42
  Well, I'm absolutely certain that I could never do this again and again and again and again. And maybe not, you know, a million times that I caught lightning in a bottle. Because I know what happened. And what happened was I took a thousand left turns, a thousand right turns, a thousand U-turns. And a lot of times I was just flipping a coin.
• 4:11
  It just happened. I go left, I go right. And I went left, and all of a sudden, I'm up on the highway flying away, and I'm a genius. I could have easily gone right and been like Thelma and Louise and just going off the bridge. And I know that. So because I know what happened, I know that a lot of it was just trial and error and just bad.
• 4:40
  tossing a coin. Does that not dissuade somebody? Does like, if you're listening to that and you're young and you're ambitious and you're just like, well, shit. No, because what this book is about is about, it is about recognizing luck, but it's also a book about finding luck, enhancing luck, return on luck and,
• 5:04
  Bad luck becoming good luck, making failure your friend. Luck doesn't just happen. Luck happens, or whatever you want to call it, when you're looking for opportunity. And so what the book is about is about how to improve your chances for luck. For example, and there's all sorts of rules of the game.
• 5:30
  Of the business lane. If you go to a casino, there are certain rules that you play in a casino. The book says to do certain things. You get two aces, you split. That's the rule. That's the book. That's the book.
• 5:45
  You get 16 and they got 10, you hit the 16. You get 16, they got five, you stick. All those rules that we find in casinos, all those rules are in this life that we're living. And so what my book is to show the way to improve your luck by making different choices along the way. And those choices...
• 6:14
  come from experience you know i know that you split aces i just know it i know that if i want to open up an attraction i'm in the attraction business location location location if i have a bad location but yet sometimes you'll drive down the road and you'll see some building going what's he doing what are they doing over there
• 6:41
  That's hitting on 16 when you shouldn't. You're not playing by the book. So this book is to show you ways. Like one of my chapters is called Never Eat Alone. And there was a book written called Never Eat Alone that was very impactful for me.
• 7:05
  That chapter is all about getting out there and looking for opportunities. You're never gonna have a chance to make a goal if you don't take a shot on goal. I said that because you're from Canada, I wanted to make you comfortable. But Gretzky said that, that's a Gretzky quote. And so, if you sit in your office all day, every day, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,
• 7:35
  your chances of having success or finding luck is much, much, much diminished. But if you go out and take certain people to lunches, if you go give speeches, if you join boards, if you're in service clubs, if you're in your church, whatever it is, the more lottery balls you get to draw, the more chances you have of winning the lottery.
• 8:05
  When you look back at your own life and your own career, a lot of what you're talking about is like, yes, just an abundance of action leads to more opportunity, pattern recognition and seeing what works and what doesn't, that leads to you making smarter choices and whatnot. But I want to go back to the pure luck, like the most simplest definition because this will just be a fun story. If you go back in your life,
• 8:33
  What was one decision that you made that was pure luck that shouldn't have worked out the way that it did? Because you mentioned if you went right instead of left, it wouldn't have ended up like this. Well, pure luck is catching lightning in a bottle almost. I mean, it's winning the lottery. It's winning a scratch off. There's three types of luck. There's pure luck.
• 9:03
  catching lightning in a bottle. And then there's planned luck. That's Benjamin Franklin with the kite and the key. And he sees this stuff up there. He's like, let's see what happens. That's planned luck. And then there's practice luck.
• 9:21
  You see a football game that teams down by four points, they're on their five-yard line, and they got to get down the field in 60 seconds, and they do. But the reason they do is because they practice that two-minute drill every day in practice every single day. So when we watch it happen, it seems like...
• 9:45
  I mean, how is this happening? How lucky are they? That's practice luck because they know how to, the routes to get close to out of bounds, get out, stop the clock, what are they going to do? You know, down the ball, they got the hole. It's not when you watch that two-minute drill.
• 10:02
  It seems like it's us in the backyard when we were kids in the snow just drawing up plays. But it's a lot of practiced luck. You know, when you go back to what got you started, it was more or less, I think, the inflection point in your life is the story about your brother Tim at 18. He was a lifeguard at Disney World. I'll let you sort of expand on that just briefly, but ultimately the system let him down.
• 10:29
  And that prompted you to sort of figure out how to go after the system, right? Well, Tim's horrible luck. Tim's, I mean, the worst luck you could imagine. You're 18 years old, you're a lifeguard, and you're a C6, C7 quadriplegic. When I got to the hospital, he was just spinning on a gurney. He was a head on a pillow. And that was, you know...
• 10:55
  was the worst day of my life because I'm like, we're so screwed. But that bad luck turned out to be my whole life's work because I got inside of there and
• 11:14
  saw the system. I became enraged because I saw how my brother's getting pushed around. And when you're poor and helpless, hopeless, powerless, those are the worst feelings in the world. And you can do nothing about it. And that moment, I was like, you know what? One day I'm going to come back.
• 11:38
  And I'm going to be the voice for the Tims of the world. So Tim's bad luck turned out to be my best luck. Now, Tim's bad luck, he was supposed to be a C6-7 quad forever, not moving anything, but somehow...
• 11:57
  miraculously, he became what's known as a super quad. He could drive a car. He could, you know, I mean, if we were at a party and you heard a bunch of laughter, it's Tim. He was self-sufficient, had a daughter.
• 12:11
  And so that bad luck, we turned into better luck because of a lot of medical, but also a lot of prayer. I mean, we're Catholic. We were getting Lourdes water in. We were putting water on his legs, and we were just praying like crazy. So as bad as it was, it could have been worse. But his injury...
• 12:35
  and gave me my whole career. And then later in life, he came and worked with me at the firm. It's interesting how even the worst possible thing outside of death, God forbid, that could happen to somebody, a lot of how life turns out is how you react and respond to those events. And Tim was the master. On Tim's deathbed,
• 13:03
  Tim was the most upbeat guy in the world. Always laughing. Always jovial. The last thing he ever said to me the day before he died was I was in his room and I said, you know, Tim, you're the bravest person I've ever met. I said, I just don't know how you did it. And he said,
• 13:34
  I laughed so you wouldn't cry. I was like, fuck. When I left, I had to pull my car over and gather myself. Because with all that badness, he was worried about us.
• 14:01
  And the pain that he suffered was just immeasurable. And the indignation and the humiliation. I mean, every time he would go anywhere, he had to scout the room out to see, can I go there? How do I get in the pool? You know, go to a hotel. I mean, his whole life was navigating the situation. But he did it with the most incredible grace and grit and humor. I laughed so you wouldn't cry.
• 14:32
  It puts everything in perspective. All of it. When things didn't go right in your own life, because inevitably things don't always go right. Do you ever go back to the life that he lived and think this is nothing? Why am I complaining about this? Constantly. I always felt, and the reason I was so vested in Tim, is I always felt,
• 15:00
  that he took the injury for us. One time he told my dad, he said, my dad was up in his room and, you know, when you went to Tim's hospital room, there was, you could always smell reefer floating down the hallway and there was champagne bottles on outs, you know, where they'd all been partying. And so one night daddy goes in there and he says, Tim, you know, this whole time you've never cried.
• 15:31
  It's okay to cry. And he told my daddy, he goes, I don't feel like crying. If I wanted to cry, I'll cry. And daddy said, well, why not? He said, I've looked at it. He goes, if this happened to John, he'd be suicidal. He'd be trying to kill himself. If this happened to Mike, he'd be very depressed because he doesn't have as many friends. And the two little ones, they can't rehab.
• 16:00
  And he said to my dad, he goes, if it had to happen to one of the five of us, it's good that it happened to me because I can handle it at 18. That's a lot of wisdom at 18. Oh, and from that night is when I said to myself, he took this for us.
• 16:23
  You know, it could have been us, and it wasn't. It was Tim. So I always felt an obligation to take care of Tim, and I spent my whole life. You know, the doctor told me when he got hurt, I went in his office, and he said, you know, a C6, 7C quad can expect to live to 30. And I just looked at the doctor, and I stood up, and I said, you're wrong.
• 16:53
  And when Tim turned 65, I told him, I said, you know, I told that doctor, you're going to live past 30, and now you're 65. You're on your own now, motherfucker.
• 17:12
  How do you bottle up that wisdom, that feeling of nothing in life is really that bad because I've seen what really bad is? How do you pass that on to somebody? Because I've tried to figure this out before. How do you bottle up rock bottom? Because you never want anyone else to go through rock bottom. But at the same time, having somebody close to you or going through it yourself is the single most powerful thing.
• 17:39
  That bit of experience you can ever get to navigate all the difficult shit that isn't actually that bad. And all the problems with getting fired from a job or, you know, your customer cancels the service or you get sued or whatever happens in your business. Or in your life, you get dumped. Doesn't matter. It's all about perspective. It's not so bad. But if people don't have that rock bottom moment...
• 18:02
  everything that's bad that happens, they feel like their world's ending. And then they don't keep going. They don't do more action. The whole premise of the book is you've got to keep going and taking more steps and taking more action. That's how you win. Even if you fail. So how do you bottle that up? Well, first of all, what it does is it gives you perspective. There's always, you know, I got sciatica. Tim's paralyzed.
• 18:30
  I got a low back pain. Tim's, and my brothers, you know, we talk about it now. My brother Mike's been having some leg and back problems, and he goes, but you know, every time I think about it, I think about Tim because our, you know, our pain, compared to what his pain was, was just night and day.
• 18:55
  So it gives you perspective, and when you have perspective, you're much more clear-eyed about what's important and what's not. I mean, his life was amazing to watch simply because of his resilience and his ability to just laugh through everything. I keep thinking about, I was watching the Jubilee episode that you did. Uh-huh. Where you're talking to all these kids and whatnot. Yeah.
• 19:25
  And I just keep thinking about if only they could understand what real problems are. I feel like that would help them navigate life a lot better. And, you know, being very transparent, I haven't had anything in my life as difficult as what you've gone through. But I try and take that lesson and that perspective from you and other people who have gone through really, really, really bad events. I never thought I went through. I didn't go. I mean, he carried it all. I mean, I would go do. I did.
• 19:52
  You know what I mean? I mean, I put it this way. There's nothing that Tim ever asked for me to do that I did not do. I never said no to Tim because I was so...
• 20:08
  amazed at his courage that I'm like, you know, I mean, sometimes he'd be low on money or something. He'd come in. I'm like, well, how are you low on money? Look at my bills. I'm like, but he'd have this list of bills, and I'd like, you know, I just, okay, what do you need? You know, what do you need? And I never said no. I never, ever, ever said no to Tim because I had always felt that he had taken the bullet for me.
• 20:35
  I approached Tim with that mindset. So even though that was the worst thing that's ever happened in your life, there was a portion of that that turned into the best luck. Right. Because that was easy. That's the irony. Right. Sometimes bad luck is what gives us our best luck because out of adversity or experience, I didn't know what a personal injury lawyer was. Yeah.
• 21:02
  I mean, I thought lawyers like Perry Mason and criminal stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. I had no idea what it was.
• 21:14
  when you first started the firm, there was a little bit of luck. So talk to me about how you even, so this was the motivation more or less that made you want to be a personal injury. No, I never applied anywhere else except personally. I had a lot of job offers. When I was at the University of Florida, I was president of this organization called Florida Blue Key, which at the time was a really big deal at Florida. It's like you were the big man on campus.
• 21:41
  And so consequently, I had a lot of big law firms trying to hire me. And I said no to all of them. And one guy that wanted to hire me, Mark Halsey, he had a firm called Smith & Halsey. And I told him, no, no, no. He said, what do you, why not? I said, this is what I'm going to go do. He said, where do you want to go? I said, I'm interviewing with his firm. I had one interview. And Mark was the president of Florida Barber.
• 22:08
  And he said, do you want me to call Jerry Billings for you? I said, yeah. He called Jerry Billings, and that's where I got my job. That's a little bit of luck, but that's also never eat alone, get in the right rooms. Listen, I became president of Blue Key. Mark Halsey was our...
• 22:26
  Alumni advisor. So I put myself in a position to be lucky. If I'm not the president of Blue Key, I'm not sitting in sports and courts. There's a racquetball place that served hamburgers talking to Mark Hulsey. When did you choose to bet on yourself? I have always bet on myself.
• 22:47
  I bet on myself when I was seven years old and I got an Archie's comic book and there was selling Christmas cards and you can make some money and win bicycles. And I sent off from my package from Cheerful Card Company.
• 23:03
  White Plains, New York, and the samples came, and I just sold the piss out of Christmas cards. And when my grandmother took the cards, the stuff to her, she was a secretary of the ag department. She went down there and sold it. And one day I just put on my first communion outfit.
• 23:24
  In the wintertime, seersucker jacket, and I got on a bus and went downtown Lexington to start going to office buildings, and I won the big prize for selling the most Christmas cards. So I have always a bet on me. And then...
• 23:42
  I write about it in my book. A few years later, I had a bad tooth. I go to the dentist. I hear my dad out talking to the dentist. My dad says, how much is it going to cost to fix it? He said, we can do it. We can do it. We can do the root canal for $50 or we can pull it for five. And my dad's like, well, we're going to have to go ahead and pull it. I'm like,
• 24:06
  damn, we're fucked. I mean, we're pulling permanent teeth at 10. I'm like, fuck, I'm in the wrong family here. And when I got in the car and pulled the gauze out, the hole was so big, I thought the guy had taken three out. And then I walked in and I saw my brothers and sisters, and they're looking at me like, and I'm like, yeah, we're all fucked. We're in this family with no cash.
• 24:33
  And then what I did is I got busy. I went and bought a paper route. And that's why. But I always had that seed in me anyway. But losing that tooth, I went and bought the route from the Mobley Twins. And I never looked back. That was the last time.
• 24:50
  I ever was not relying on myself in some form or fashion to fix my tooth. And as life went on, my teeth were kind of crooked anyway. They kind of pulled back naturally without braces. But I never fixed the hole, even though I got two brothers that are dentists. And they would say, let me fix the hole. I said, you know what? I like that hole there. Every time my tongue drags across it.
• 25:20
  I remember that feeling of desperation and the feeling of desperation and helplessness and hopelessness. The one thing it gives you, which is something very good, is it I think it makes you a more compassionate person. I think when you've been there.
• 25:40
  And had that happen to you, that you become someone with a lot more empathy and compassion. And I think empathy and compassion, when my kids were little, I used to, you know, what do you, I say, listen, be compassionate. And when we'd see homeless people, I'd give them money. I used to tell the kids, I'd say, look, understand one thing. They don't want to be there.
• 26:07
  And once upon a time they were your age and they were on a swing and they were getting ice cream. Don't ever try to judge why they're there or if they're going to take the money and go get beer or drugs. I don't even care what the fuck they get. I'm going to give them the money to relieve their pressure just for that day, that moment. And I think that having a little bit tougher life than other people makes you more compassionate, which makes you more human.
• 26:38
  I agree. I feel like, I don't know, this is what I see because there's so much toxic hate on social media and that's where we get most of our information now. But I guess the question or the thought is,
• 27:01
  Why does it feel like there's no more empathy? Like nobody cares about everybody. Like I feel like. Well, people are, people get to be behind walls and say shit behind walls and computers. And you can say, you know, and I think it all started with Rush Limbaugh when he just started brutalizing, you know, that talk radio just be like, whoa, what's going on?
• 27:26
  And so we, along the way, because we're behind computers and behind walls, we lost a lot of civility. You know, people will just say outrageous shit to me.
• 27:41
  about me, you know, about my, even my appearance or me or my family. I mean, they don't care. I mean, it's, there's a lot, there's, there's quite a few mean people out there. I've never thought about what you just mentioned about Rush Limbaugh and talk radio. I always felt like it happened after COVID when people spent two years trapped inside on Twitter. Rush Limbaugh.
• 28:05
  He was the one that was just taking people apart. And he taught the media that the audience liked it. And Donald Trump became president over it.
• 28:23
  Donald Trump was Rush Limbaugh on steroids. I mean, he went through his competition from low energy Jeb to little Marco to Lion Ted. I mean, he just took it and just cut them to the above. John McCain. I mean, it didn't matter. Every time he would do it, you're like...
• 28:49
  All right, that's it. Okay, now McCain's not a hero, but unfortunately there's an audience out there that likes that brutal slaying of each other. And it gets the clicks and it gets the comments and it drives them. Oh. I would assume...
• 29:08
  It's sad, but I would assume that the second that your name gets on the rich list and gets associated with billionaire status, then all of a sudden people lose empathy for you completely. Yeah, because a lot of people just don't think it's fair. They just think, you know, what about me? And look, I can tell you when I always, as a kid, you know who I used to always have a problem with? The monarchies. Mm-hmm.
• 29:38
  I despise Harry and Meghan even now, for example. I'm like, who the fuck are you? I mean, I'm not even sure he's the king's son for that matter. Well, they don't do a good job of being very likable. No, but all the royals are like, you know, it's almost like they walk around like, I did this. Yeah, that's my issue with it too. I did this.
• 30:08
  You know, and that's why the little kid from Norway got sentenced to four years in prison today for rape and why Prince Andrew is now, I mean, because they just grow up with this entitlement. But I always had a problem.
• 30:24
  with monarchies and royals. And I also, I got to confess, I was also jealous and envious of people that were born into money. You know, I'm over there, you know, grabbing bottles out of the grass.
• 30:39
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• 31:08
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• 31:44
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• 32:05
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• 32:27
  15% off for new customers. Use my code Scott at Huel.com slash Scott and do the post checkout survey. It helps to show, go to Huel.com slash Scott, code Scott. So why does somebody look at you that came from nothing and built this incredible career? I've always tried to figure this out because when I look at somebody like you, I'm like, look at what's possible. That's the frame that I take. That's super exciting for me. It's like, oh my God, look at the opportunity in this world, right?
• 32:57
  Why does somebody look at you and think, you know, F this guy, it's not fair. I should have more money, I should be, why is it that the default reaction is I'm a victim? Well, first of all, you've heard this said many times before, comparison is the thief of joy. I mean, you look at him and you look at myself and you're like, there's just a, you know, why am I suffering like this?
• 33:26
  And he's not. They don't take the time to think all the hours that I put in. I mean, the one thing that's certain, while I believe I'm lucky in many respects, I put the hours in. I put the hours in. To be a paperboy at seven days a week, rain, sleet, snow,
• 33:54
  if you didn't if the paper was missed you got to go back out i put the hours in now in those hours there was decisions made all along the way and a lot of the times those decisions were okay and that's where the luck comes in and you know like for for example i built these attractions
• 34:17
  My first attraction I built in Orlando, and it's still killing it 30 years later. But I built another attraction, same attraction, but I built it in a mall in Syracuse, and it's shit. Money-wise. It's great inside, but it's shit. Money-wise. If I built that one first, I'd have never built the other six.
• 34:42
  Same stuff. Everything is the same, but that one location, Orlando versus Syracuse. And then I did Pigeon Forge next, which was another great location. So the sequence and how I built my attractions, if I'd done it the other way, I don't think I'd have built but one because this is a bad idea. Do you believe – so I'm going to just say, like, would you not – if you not –
• 35:09
  after everything that you've learned building Morgan & Morgan and the amount of shots that you had to take to make that successful, you wouldn't have looked at the first theme park if it was unsuccessful and be like, well, I just haven't tried it enough yet? Well, I'll tell you a story. I built an attraction in Washington, D.C. I called it the National Museum of Crime and Punishment. It was the greatest thing I've ever built.
• 35:37
  the history of crime. But in D.C., I couldn't do anything with the building. I couldn't, you know, but I had it all. The attraction was fantastic. In the basement, I filmed America's Most Wanted. It never made, it made enough money to pay the rent and just a little bit of money. And one day, the management came in and said, you're not hitting your numbers. We're going to call your lease. I'm like, well, I'm paying your rent. Why do you want, they, so I had to,
• 36:06
  Pack up my shit. And it was over. Why? I don't get it. In my lease, I had to be hitting certain numbers and I wasn't hitting them. I was paying the lease, but they were worried about their percentage rent that they weren't getting. And that was in the lease. To tell you the truth, it was almost like a blessing. It's like, stop the fucking merry-go-round. Let me off.
• 36:28
  You know, I mean, this ride ain't good. But then I started like, you know, and to my wife's credit, it was the best thing I ever built. So I took that failure, that problem, and I said, you know what? I'm going to go to a city where I know.
• 36:47
  back where Wonderworks was in Pigeon Forge. I found a great location and I built it again. This time I called it Alcatraz East. And when you Google Alcatraz East, it looks like an 1800 prison. And when you go in there, it's like it's a prison.
• 37:09
  And when you end the attraction, there's cars. There's Ted Bundy's VW. There's John Dillinger's sedan. There's the Bonnie and Clyde death car. There's OJ's Bronco. All those things were in D.C. making no money. And now they're in Pigeon Forge fucking printing money. And I built the whole thing cash.
• 37:36
  And the thing makes, you know, $7 million a year, net, net, net. Really? Yeah. So how many shots do you take before you give up on something? Well, in my trial business, you know, you lose in trial. You lose in trial. But the great thing about losing in trial is you learn when you lose. You know, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the $20,000 whatever rule. Yeah, the hours. Yeah.
• 38:04
  20 hours a week, you know, whatever. It's a lot of hours. A lot of hours. But even when you're losing, you're winning.
• 38:18
  Because when you learn from that mistake, when you go back again, it's like going through a mirror maze. If you go through a mirror maze the first time, you're ready to scream. But when you go through the mirror maze for the 10th time,
• 38:38
  You know you don't go that way. You go that way. And then when you go that way, you know you don't go that way. You go that way because you've now gone through it. And those hours of being trapped and failing then come back to pay big dividends because it's like you've got these markings now and you know where you're going. You're in the forest now.
• 39:01
  but you got yellow ribbons around the trees to guide you out of the forest. That's the thing. Like people, people just have to, again, it's all about how you respond to the failure. Right. And see, for most people, failure is the last, that's it. Okay. I'm not going to do it again. And when you don't make failure, your friend is a disaster because they're the most knowledge we get is,
• 39:31
  is when we fail because we know what not to do the next time. It's like the Rod Stewart song, I wish I knew then what I know now. Think of how dangerous you'd have been in college at 18 years old. Oh, would you have been scared to call people up for, I mean, just to call somebody up for a date, you're like...
• 39:56
  But if you knew then what you know now, you'd be a big swinging dick walking around that campus. You'd be like, hey, honey. I mean, you know, in my book, when I was in the sixth grade, I had a teacher who had been to Miss University of Kentucky, but she never got married. And I asked her one time, I said, why did you never get married? You're Miss University of Kentucky, Miss Brewer. And she said, well, she said, believe it or not, people didn't ask me out.
• 40:26
  I said, why? Because I was Miss University of Kentucky. So I, in the sixth grade, I hear Miss Brewer say that. When I went forward in life, I took more chances asking good-looking women out than not because I had remembered what Miss Brewer said about sitting at home on Friday and Saturday night. So I'm like, you know,
• 40:52
  I'm going to take that experience from Ms. Brewer trying to get my reading level up. Yeah. And I married Dan's mother. I married a beautiful girl. That's smart. I wish that more people when they were young would understand. I mean, like if I understood what I knew now in life. I can't remember who told me this idea. The idea of when you're young, not only...
• 41:18
  Would it be great if you just took audacious moves in life? You asked her out, you asked for the interview, you asked for the meeting, you asked for the coffee. But the thing is when you're young, people give you more grace. Like you have an advantage when you're 20 years old. If you're a 20 year old and you ask, pick a famous person, billionaire, mentor, you ask that person for like five minutes of their time for coffee, they won't all say yes. But because you're 20, some will say yes.
• 41:48
  And then when you're 35, I'm 35. No one just gives me the benefit of being young anymore. You lose that at like 25, 26, 27. I'm amazed at that comedian Pete Davidson. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he looks like Beetlejuice.
• 42:02
  You know, he's one of the ugliest guys in the world. He dates the hottest girls. He dates the hottest girls. And he's either got courage or a huge dick. One of the two. I don't know what it is. But you look at him and you're like, how is this son of a bitch? I mean, he is just pulling them off one right after the other. And you look at him and go, where is he getting his balls to go up and ask these people out? Right.
• 42:27
  But, I mean, he never misses. And then he'll date them and be done with them like in, you know, a month. He's over it. He's over it. He's moving. I mean, I got some that he got. I would just be hanging on for dear life forever. But Pete Davidson, man, he just moves right through it. Man, that's life. Anybody who has the balls to ask, they always win in life. Oh, yeah. They always win. Yeah, and then sometimes you're like, you know, you'd be like, why is that girl with him?
• 42:56
  What's going on? I'll tell you why. He asked. And that's the point of the book. The way you find luck is you're looking for opportunity. How do you find it? You ask. You do. Not asking. Don't ask.
• 43:15
  Don't get. You know, you just came from Grant Cardone's studio. I've had podcasts with everybody in the circle now, like Grant, Elena, Brandon, Natalie, like the whole team. And Grant, I've done a few podcasts with. But when I first started this show, I had no name. Nobody knew who I was. And you want to talk about just like shooting your shot. So I hit up.
• 43:37
  I don't know, maybe 500 big entrepreneur, influencer types. And I got Grant Cardone to come on the show in like the first 10, 15 episodes, way before I should have had him on. I had no idea what the hell I was doing, but I got Patrick Bed-David. I got Guy Kawasaki, he was one of the first employees at Apple. I got Scaramucci in the first like 15 episodes. He's on everything, every time I get on my feet, he's on Scaramucci. Yeah, but I mean like when I'm just starting out, so I was nervous as hell.
• 44:06
  I was sweating. I had no idea what I was doing, but I just asked. And guess what? This podcast, I mean, everybody wants to have a successful podcast, everybody. The barrier to entry is next to impossible because everybody wants to be in. And then you say, well, why did you do it? I believe that, and I talk about in the book, resilience and grit.
• 44:34
  That, you know, no means yes. That, you know, for some people, no's like, oh, oh, oh. And think of how many podcasts never, ever take off. You want to know the number? Like 99%. Yeah, it's like if you do over 10 episodes, you're in the top 1% of all podcasts. Thank you. Yeah. It's crazy. But you have to be willing to be resilient enough to say, you know what?
• 45:04
  I got to just keep going. And most people cannot. Most people cannot handle rejection. They cannot handle failure. It's easier to quit than to drive through the mud. But that's the thing that makes a good life. But there's something, I believe, inside of some people that gives them that resilience. And I think some of it is genetics.
• 45:32
  And just as genetic as Shaq being 7'2". I mean, you know, you saw me walk in. I couldn't be Shaq no matter how hard I wish. I'd like to be Shaq, but there's no me being Shaq. His height is the same that your grit and resilience is for you.
• 45:52
  Because that number you just gave me is a blowaway number, and I can't imagine how many podcasts are attempted a year. I mean, everybody. I mean, it seems so great. You know, you're in here, and you're in the chairs, and you're having a great conversation, and you're making money, and you're in Miami. I mean, it doesn't seem like work. It is work.
• 46:19
  That's the magic of it. It doesn't seem like work, but it's a lot of work. But the most thing is you are able... That's why the best salesmen are the ones that can just keep knocking on that door, door shut, door shut, door shut, you know. And it's very hard to do. It's funny because what you just described is how I've gotten everything in my life. When I first started my career as in sales, and I was building a business,
• 46:51
  pitching to investors, getting people on the podcast. Like everything has just been, like for me it's always a volume problem. Just like if I don't. But you have a special gift that you're not, when you get knocked down you get back up. A lot of people get knocked down, they don't get back up. There's a thing I give, a speech I give, and I'll do it briefly, but at the end I talk about the thrill in Manila.
• 47:20
  Ollie Frazier. In the 15th round, Ollie said, take off my gloves. Frazier couldn't see. Eddie Fudge said, you can't see. I'm going to throw the towel in. He said, don't you dare. The bell rings. You see Ollie's corner pushing him up. He stands up. Fudge sees Ollie stand up. He threw the towel in. Ollie takes three steps and collapses. He wasn't able to finish.
• 47:49
  But he became the greatest because he answered the bell. Answering the bell is hard as shit. And Ollie didn't even want to answer the bell. And the kind of great thing about that story is it's also important who's in your corner.
• 48:06
  If Ali had been left to his own devices, they'd have cut the gloves off. But Bundini Brown and Angelo Dundee said no, and you'll see him. When people watch his podcast, Google it, they're pushing him out of the chair. He takes three steps and goes down. If Eddie Fudge's corner hadn't thrown the towel in, he's the greatest. So two things from that fight.
• 48:33
  If you don't answer the bell, you can't be the greatest. And if you don't have a great corner that believes in you, you can't be the greatest. When you did that Jubilee episode and you're sitting down, it was mostly younger adults. I can't remember every single interview or every single conversation you had, but...
• 48:56
  What is your takeaway from chatting with all those people? Like, what is your thought when you sit down with all these people that are pushing back against, I guess they're pushing back against what? Wealth?
• 49:06
  Somebody being able to become a billionaire. Somebody was like taken up for China as a comment. Like, it's okay in China. I'm like, I've been to China. It's not okay in China. It's like it's slavery in China. You buy a house, you lose it in 75 years. I mean, that one kid was like going on about China. I'm like, man, no. No.
• 49:28
  So what is the issue? Is it lack of, is it education system? Is it lack of belief in themselves? Is it like, what's the thing that is plaguing? Because I've tried to have this conversation with a few people and I don't have kids yet, so I don't know. I'm 35. I've always sort of probably held a similar belief system to you on a lot of things.
• 49:47
  So I've never hated people that are successful. I've never hated the country that I was in, Canada or the U.S. I've never thought that, you know, how do I say it? If someone else is successful, I can't be. Like I'm always looking at you and I'm like, oh, if that person is successful, then that's a great opportunity for me. What I really think the anger is,
• 50:14
  the resentment towards whoever's successful. They're not mad at me. They're mad at themselves. Look, this is not rocket science. You put the work in, enough work in, you have a better chance. You don't have a 100% chance by any stretch of the time, but you have a better chance.
• 50:41
  of doing well. If you don't put any work in, you have no chance. And a lot of these people are putting no to little work in and they know it. I mean, listen, you know what your day is. I know what my day is. They know what their day is. They can say whatever they want. You know, I'll tell you this is like work from home. Everybody, the younger people want to work from home.
• 51:08
  You know why they want to work from home? Because when you work from home, you are not working from fucking home. You know, you're walking around in your pajamas watching Montel and eating popcorn. And so the remaining people that I put work from home, this was an interesting study. I said, okay, some people I'm going to let stay home. They want to stay home? Okay. They're going to be more productive at home. But I put cameras on the computers.
• 51:37
  I'm typing, you know, I'm counting keystrokes, and I got proto scores. The first week, 13 people quit working from home who said they would never come into the office. And I said, why are they quitting? They felt it was invasive. What's invasive? I mean, I don't see their face. I just see a pixel. They didn't want to be accountable. What they didn't want to do is they didn't want to work.
• 52:08
  because they're lazy, but they want to be paid to work from home. And so, look, there are people that I have no problem working from home, because there are certain people that you know they're going to work from home, but very few. So what I think is they don't want to work, and they're mad when they're caught,
• 52:33
  But deep down, if they're honest, they're mad at themselves. If everybody is lazy, or a lot of people are lazy, then that creates such a huge opportunity for people that aren't, though. That's right. Because I always look at it like this. There's a sugar cube. And that's where the ants go, to the sugar cube.
• 52:57
  And the only ants that get up on the top of the sugar cube are the ants that climb and work and get up on the top of the sugar cube. The lazy ants never get to the top of the sugar cube, so there's fewer ants at the top of the sugar cube, and so those ants get the most sugar, and the ants that never climb to the top of the sugar cube get no sugar. And the ants that are at the top of the sugar cube have so much sugar involved
• 53:25
  Because they're doing all the work. They made the climb. It's the climb. The climb is the work. When you get to the top of the mountain, two things. One, it's not as much fun. The climb is the fun. Once you get up there and you look around, okay, what do I do now? Climb down.
• 53:48
  Okay. The fun is the climb, then you get there. But most people, it's too hard to climb. You have hit the summit of the mountain on success, on building a business. What drives you now when it's no longer about the money? Well, now that I'm at where I am, what my focus now is is
• 54:13
  I've got four children. I want to make sure that their life is the same as it was growing up, but not in a crazy way. And then what I want to do is that they have enough money that they're safe, and then I've started a foundation. The guy that runs my family office is running that. And so the next part of my life,
• 54:39
  is going to be, and there's a book called this, going from success to significance, from strength to strength. I don't know if you've read that book. In the first part of our life, we are writing our CV. In the second part of our life, or this last part of our life, we're writing our eulogy.
• 55:06
  And so my focus now is as I start to climb down, and it's easier to climb down than climb up,
• 55:18
  is to do good. And so I'm trying to find things that we, you know, like we built a, recently we built a food bank in Appalachia. I'm building a Boys and Girls Club up in Tallahassee. We're building the Woman and Children's Pavilion at the Coalition for the Homeless in Orlando. I believe that my focus
• 55:47
  toward the end is going to be going from success to significance. And by the way, there is work in giving away money because it's like, you know, who's good and who's bad. I rely heavily on Charity Navigator. I like things that are like with the Boys and Girls Club. I know once it's built, I don't have to be worried about feeding it. So that's where my focus is now.
• 56:15
  In that second stage of life also you talked about your kids and how you're sort of setting them up and I learned a couple things that I was researching. So you have a hundred million dollar cut off and then you also have a really strict prenup strategy for your kids. I want you to just mention some thoughts around sort of wealth preservation, passing that over to your kids and then also how to set up them for success with prenups and why that matters. But also,
• 56:41
  For people that have built wealth, how do they not screw up their kids? Well, what I would say, like Dan sitting over there, he worked at Wonder Works once and I fired him because he was fucking off down there. And when he got fired, I said, Dan, and I never gave up. I think parents make a big mistake by buying their kids nice cars in high school.
• 57:04
  But I think they're trying to show off for themselves, not for their kid. It's like, hey, my kid's got a BMW. My kids were driving 10-year-old Navigators and shit. But when Dan got fired, when I fired Dan at Wonder Works, I said, now, here's the deal. You need to go. The only way you're leaving this house is to go to school or look for a job.
• 57:28
  And he went out looking for a job. He gets a job at Boston Market. They were going to cook hams. He comes in after about five days. He goes, they're not letting me out. They still got me washing dishes. I said, think about that, Dan. They think so highly of you that you're at the bottom of the barrel at Boston Market. And then Dan quit. He just walked out without a paycheck. He couldn't handle the smell in the dishwasher room. And when he came home, I said, Dan,
• 57:57
  remember the deal, you don't leave the house unless you're going to go to school or look for a job. And he went out immediately and got a job at Firehouse Subs, and he became one of the great sub makers of all time at Firehouse. And I think Dan will look back on those days as very instructive because, you know, one Christmas that Mike and Dan, Mike and Matt, I said, when are you all going to go get your –
• 58:27
  scheduled for Christmas. And Mike said, nobody at Bishop Moore is working over Christmas. I said, that's not true. And Matt goes, yeah, it's true. Nobody's working. I said, well, I know it's true. No, that's not true. They go, yes, it is, Daddy. I said, let me tell you why it's not true. You two motherfuckers are working.
• 58:48
  Okay, I mean, and here's the great thing for you. You can pick your 40 hours, 8 to 5, 12 to 9, 5 to 2. You don't have to work on Christmas Day. You don't have to work. But you two motherfuckers are working. If they don't learn to work, then they never know how to work. And I think there's people that, you know, their kids don't work in the summer.
• 59:17
  I can't imagine not having my kids working in the summer somewhere doing something. I mean, all they're doing, the kids are sleeping and watching TV. No, you got to, the way you teach a horse to run is you teach them to run. And the way you teach somebody to work is you teach them to work. You got to show up. Why did the $100 million cutoff become a thing for your family? Because I figured, okay.
• 59:45
  100 million tax-free bonds, 4%. That's 4 million a year tax-free. If they can't live on that, they got big problems. And then I also knew that I wanted to have, because my kids are very ambitious. They want more than 100. And I wanted to give them enough runway to go get more.
• 1:00:09
  And of the four of them, some will have more than the other because some will want it more. And they deserve it. But I also wanted them all to have, you know...
• 1:00:21
  to enjoy exactly the type of life that they've enjoyed so far. And for context, this $100 million cutoff I'm talking about, so if your kids have $100 million or more, they get nothing from the estate, and all the money goes to the foundation. You want a billion-dollar foundation. And then some of your kids already are past this $100 million line, from what I understand. So then it's up to them at this point. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:00:49
  And the ones that are past it, they want more, which I'm happy about. But I also believe that they will take their fortune and pour it back into the foundation as well. I mean, I hope that I've taught them that too. And the prenup that you have everybody. So every one of your four kids, they have a prenup as well. So if you don't have a prenup, you don't take under the will.
• 1:01:15
  Yeah, if you, the deal, and I do it this way because I say, you know, let me be the bad guy. Let me tell the new person, if we don't have signed this, we don't get anything. We'll get some money every year. So I'm the bad guy. Which is bad because if you, you know, when the thing about prenups, look, some people are marrying for money. Let's just face it.
• 1:01:44
  And who knows who is and who isn't. But what we do know is that 50% to 60% of all marriages end in divorce. So we know that that's there no matter what. And so those are odds that we just know. And then I say, here's the prenup. I got it all drafted up for them.
• 1:02:09
  And if the person doesn't want to sign it, they don't have to sign it, but they just don't take under the will.
• 1:02:15
  So you have this $100 million cap. You got your kids to work young. You have an ironclad prenup that they all have to participate in if they want to be in the will. What are some last sort of words of wisdom for people that are at this level or even people that have not hit, you know, like this level but have significant wealth, had an exit? They don't want to screw up the kids. Like what's your advice to that person?
• 1:02:40
  My advice is, you know, while they're young, you know, let them earn almost everything. You know, this money comes later and hopefully never at all.
• 1:02:55
  If my plan works right, now look, my kids got head starts. They get to work in the firm. They get to work in the business. They've already got head starts. But hopefully the way this cookie will crumble is by the time my wife and I die, most of them will be at that plateau.
• 1:03:17
  And moving to that plateau. And once you get to the plateau, they'll want to go higher and higher and higher and higher because most of my children are kind of built like me, which is, you know, that's how we keep score. I want to talk about patience. So you didn't take home your first million until you were 41. That's right.
• 1:03:38
  Why is that? Because I believe that the way you build wealth and the way you scale is to take your money and pour it back into your businesses. You know, I could have made more than a million, but I was taking it and opening it up in Jacksonville, opening up attractions. I kept doing my deals. And the thing about that is when you do that,
• 1:04:08
  Number one, every dollar I put in, I got 40 cents back in tax write-offs, so it wasn't really putting a dollar in. I mean, I'm putting 60 cents in. But that's really been the secret sauce to my life, which is I weighed it.
• 1:04:33
  I loved the book when I was a little boy, The Tortoise and the Hare. I loved it. And when I first read it, I was like, I didn't want to be the tortoise. I wanted to be the hare when I started reading the book. But after I read the book, I wanted to be the tortoise. Warren Buffett is the tortoise.
• 1:05:02
  You know, just plotting, plotting, plotting, compounded interest, time, patience. Patience is about waiting for it to happen instead of rushing out to try to make it happen. Because when you try to make it happen, it might and might not.
• 1:05:25
  But that Warren Buffett approach, and there's other people like him, that build their businesses slowly and methodically on a sound foundation. And what's a sound foundation? Limited, in my mind, limited debt. Strong people in your organization. Great culture. It takes time to do that. My people in my firms are very important to me.
• 1:05:55
  because I spent a lot of time hiring them, cultivating them, and growing them. But that takes time, and time is patience. NetSuite Next is a success story partner. So they say that every day your business is late to using AI, you fall two days behind.
• 1:06:12
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• 1:07:23
  It's built for every industry. It's ready for every boardroom. NetSuite.ai slash Scott Clary. My fitness pal is a success story partner. On this show, I speak to tons of high performers and the people that sustain that high performance, not just sprint and crash and burn, but they actually sustain, they all treat nutrition like a system, not an afterthought.
• 1:07:43
  The same way they treat revenue or hiring or product, it is key to their business. They pay attention. They look at the data. And that really stuck with me. And it's how I started thinking about my own health and wellness and what I put into my own body. Not in like a restrictive diet way, but in a data way. See, most people take a look at daily calorie total and they think they have the full picture. That's just one number. The MyFitnessPal app, Premium,
• 1:08:10
  It shows me macros, that means proteins, carbs, fats, broken down by meal. So I can see, am I getting enough protein at breakfast versus dinner? And it also shows me how my food is distributed across the day because of course I can take a look at my total calorie number, but to see everything broken down by meal,
• 1:08:29
  those are two completely different things even if your daily total looks fine and you're going to feel the difference if you eat proper nutrition across your entire day and you track it your energy is going to allow you to sustain that high performance also the food analysis picks up trends over the week that i'd miss just going by feel see this information makes good food choices automatic see food is a foundation right energy focus performance recovery it all starts with food so
• 1:08:56
  Do yourself a favor. Go visit podcast.myfitnesspal.com and use code SCOTT, all uppercase letters, for 15% off MyFitnessPal premium. That's podcast.myfitnesspal.com, code SCOTT. You know, we were talking earlier about...
• 1:09:14
  this sort of younger generation of people that are lazy or sometimes a little bit entitled. And this is a gross generalization. Not everybody's like that. But you notice it sometimes. I notice it at least when I'm hiring younger. I notice that there's personality traits that I see in interviews.
• 1:09:29
  that I didn't have when I was 20 years old, when I would just do anything and everything for the company and I'd put in the work and I'd work overtime and on weekends. And I didn't care because I figured, like, this is going to give me an edge on everybody else. And it gave me an edge in that when I was in whatever role I was in, but it also gave me an edge in life because I learned things, learned work ethic, things that have allowed me to become who I am today. But I think that the other issue
• 1:09:54
  outside of that is everybody wants everything immediately that nobody has patience anymore like i've always thought when i started this podcast i was like you know what someone else has figured it out before i can figure it out i'm not stupid if i do this for 10 15 years i'll figure it out i'll make it a thing and
• 1:10:16
  At the end of the day, you only have to win once in life, so why not commit 10, 15, 20-plus years of your life to something? One of the reasons you know, I write about it in the book, the money that is spent in America on lotteries and casinos, staggering. They want it today. They want to walk in there, they want to take the thing, and they want it today.
• 1:10:44
  And the book says never play the lottery. The book says rarely go into a casino. But when you do go in, go in for recreation, you know you're going to lose the money.
• 1:11:00
  When I go to a casino, I take $10,000 for the weekend. And I take $3,333 or thereabouts, or three, three, and four. First night, I go to the $100 table, and I play like hell until I've lost the three or got 10. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat.
• 1:11:26
  The highest I can do for the weekend is I can make 30. And the worst I can do is lose 10. But when I came there, I already was prepared to lose 10. Here's something interesting about people. There's two emotions. There's the emotion of winning and there's the emotion of losing.
• 1:11:55
  The emotion of winning is this. The emotion of losing is this. Give you an example. If you walk down the street and saw a package on the floor and you picked under it, it's $5,000. $5,000.
• 1:12:13
  You're like, wow, there's that emotion of winning. But on the other hand, if you went to your car and the car door was open and you'd had $5,000 in your glove compartment and the glove is gone, the emotion of losing is like, I mean, you're calling the cops. They're dusting the – you know, you're getting cameras. You are just beside yourself. If you go to the casino and you win $5,000 –
• 1:12:43
  Okay, that's good. If you lose $5,000, the emotion of winning and losing should be the same because it's the same amount of money. Win $5,000, lose $5,000. But it's not.
• 1:12:57
  What drives us crazy is the emotion of losing. But what I believe about the immediate gratification, that's what gambling and the lotteries are all about, is they want it now. And even though, when you read the chapter on lotteries, I mean, the odds of winning the lotteries, any kind of big money, is...
• 1:13:24
  But what they do is the way the casinos and lotteries keep people making mistakes is they have bells go off and people screaming and cheering. And then you see that and you're like, I can win, too. In my attractions, I got these crank games. You take the claw, it comes down, and you got this big, fat, pink bunny thing.
• 1:13:52
  Now, what they don't know is it's all pre-programmed. I mean, there's no skill involved. I'm going to let people win every 10 times or every 20 times, and then they're over there cranking it down, and then the claw gets the bunny. They've already pumped in about $100. I bought the bunny for 50 cents in China, and then the bunny comes up, and then the claw isn't dropping. It moves over, and it drops it down, and the kids are hugging their dad like he just won the World Series.
• 1:14:21
  All he did was pay $100 for a 50-cent bunny. But those bells go off and people start feeding the machine. This is life. This is life. This is life. The bells go off for the quick wins and people think, well, I want that. And then it doesn't happen. And then they quit. Yes. Failure is what stops people. What is return on luck? Because we talked about pure luck. We talked about planned luck, practiced luck. Return on luck is when you get on a hot streak, when you got something.
• 1:14:51
  When you've got a concept, I talk in the book about bullets before bombs, but a return on luck is when you get a proof of concept that works, you know what? Let's see what happens.
• 1:15:08
  Once that proof of concept happens and you get lucky, return on luck is duplicating those stores. I got a concept I did called downtown flavor town with Guy Fieri. And, you know, we did the first one in, uh,
• 1:15:27
  Pigeon 4 is a kicked ass. We did like $18 million first year. And last Friday I opened up my second one, and I plan on opening them up all over the country. That's return on luck. Once you've got something that you think works and you've got the proof of concept, you start rolling them out. Now, you could pick a bad location. I mean, there's always those variables. But return on luck is when the bullets hit...
• 1:15:58
  and you know you're onto something, then and only then do you start dropping the bombs to get that ROL, return on luck. So you've got to take enough shots to figure out what works, and then you triple down on that. Right. Bullets before bombs. Explain what even bullets before bombs. Well, okay. I'm not going to open up three at one time. I got you. That'd be bombs. I'm not going to open up...
• 1:16:25
  I'm not going to start advertising on TV in five cities. I'm going to do one city, one place only. If that starts hitting...
• 1:16:36
  And I learned then, okay, then I might go to another city, another city, another city. A lot of people will go out and try to, you know, build a chain before they build. Because they want that overnight success. Yeah. They want to be, okay, I got this idea. I'm going to build a location here and here and here. You know, you see all these coffee places that go out of business and you'll see two or three locations. Like, what the, what are they thinking? They, they, they're, they're.
• 1:17:02
  Eyes were bigger than their stomach. And then they blow through all their money. They're undercapitalized. They're spread out. You got to get in there. That first one, you got to get in and get it locked down before you ever start with the bombs. It's funny because it's kind of like, we're kind of talking about two different kinds of people here. We're talking about people that have no ambition or don't take action or are sitting on the sidelines all day. And you're talking about people who do,
• 1:17:32
  take action, are super ambitious, but then they go all in, and then they screw themselves over that way. Because they want it all now. So it's like life is always about balance. And by the way, the younger you are, the more likely you are to take crazy. Look, when I look back, when I built Wonderworks, because remember, Wonderworks is a gigantic mansion turned upside down. When you walk in, you walk in, you stand on the ceiling, you look at me in the stairs. So I was in my 30s when I built that.
• 1:18:04
  If I today had that idea, I'd be like, no, no, no. And if my kids came to me and said, hey, here's what we're going to do. I want to build an upside down. I'd be like, no, no. But what we know for a fact is young drivers have the most wrecks. Why?
• 1:18:28
  They feel invincible. They don't feel they can lose. But that's a good thing, too. That's a good thing. I write in here about music. All the music, all the great music is written by the people in their teens and their 20s. Very few songs are written after 40. The average Nobel laureate is 43 years old.
• 1:18:57
  What's very important for people is get it while it's hot. And while it's hot is when you're young. Because believe it or not, not having that fear is good. You hear that when you look at these young people, they say, go fast and break things. I don't go fast and break things anymore.
• 1:19:20
  But when I was younger, I did. And that's why you see these people that are in their 20s and 30s take an outsized risk because they don't have the fear. And they also have another great advantage. Time. They can fuck up.
• 1:19:41
  And sometimes they can fuck up a couple of times. And guess what? Every time you fuck up, that was worth it because now you have marked things to do and not to do and mistakes that you will never make again. And that's why I talk about failure being your friend. If people read the whole book, what's one thing you want them to do tomorrow? What I would want them to do is to understand that
• 1:20:12
  At the end of the day, you're never going to be 100% about anything. If you've got to wait to be 100% sure, you're not going to do anything. And that done is better than perfect. And if you're waiting for perfect, you're going to be waiting for a long time.
• 1:20:38
  But if you decide that done is better than perfect, you can still be working on it even though it's not perfect, and you can make it perfect as you go or improve it as you go, but...
• 1:20:52
  Don't wait because all of this goes like that. When Billy Graham was on his deathbed, they asked him, Reverend Graham, what has surprised you most about life? And he said, the brevity of it all. And you will find that right now your life is going slow.
• 1:21:21
  But at every new decade, it starts speeding up. The merry-go-round goes very slow in the beginning. But as you go on and on, it gets faster and faster and faster and faster. And then it's over. Do you feel it speeding up now? Oh, yeah. The speeding up like crazy. I mean, I'm thinking about leaving my Christmas lights up because...
• 1:21:46
  I mean, are we putting them back up? I mean. Time flies. Time flies. But time flies. The longest year of our life is between 15 and 16, waiting for that driver's license.
• 1:22:02
  Remember that year? And you remember another thing I can tell about kids, about future people, there's people who get their driver's license the day they turn 16. There's some people that wait until they're 17.
• 1:22:17
  I don't want those people in my organization. I want people in my organization that on the day of their birthday at 7 a.m., they're standing there with their mother or father in line getting their driver's license. And when they leave, they drive off with their driver's license. That's a key indicator.
• 1:22:39
  Why do you want that person? Because they're ambitious. They're ready to run. And they're not lazy. They're not waiting to be driven. They are driven. You mentioned in your sort of origin story, you talked about buying that first paper route and all the different sort of entrepreneurial things that you did. The people that work in your company, do you want them to be entrepreneurs too?
• 1:23:06
  Very much. Very much. The way my business is set up is everybody gets paid for what they do. They get paid for results. They get paid for bringing in business. And they don't just get paid at the end of the year. It's formulaic, and they get paid at the end of every month. This is, you know, May is over. Pay me. I want it. And look.
• 1:23:32
  I believe in leaderboards. I mean, everybody in my firm, they know there's goals. I'm a big believer in goals. I'm a big believer in leaderboards. Every single day when people put their money in, it's tabulated, you're number one, you're dead last in those practice areas for everybody to see, for everybody to see. So-
• 1:23:58
  In my firm, we are very much an eat what you kill organization. And our lawyers make a shitload of money, the good ones. So the book, Life is Luck, is available everywhere you can get books.
• 1:24:12
  Amazon, Barnes and Noble. I got audio. I did the audio myself. It's impressive. It's not easy. Where else do you want to send people if they want to consume a little bit more of your content, social, Instagram? Yeah, John Morgan ESQ. Okay. I'll put all the links in the show notes too. Thank you. If you could tell one lesson after you've lived an incredible life, you know,
• 1:24:35
  Tell one lesson to your 11-year-old paperboy self in Lexington. What would you want that kid to know? Nothing is about today. Everything is about tomorrow. Plan. Hope is not a plan. A plan is a plan. And you can't have a plan without goals, measurable goals.
• 1:25:03
  If you want to jump a pole vault 17 feet, you know, you start at 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. And then when you get to 17, 18.
• 1:25:18
  Hope is not a plan. A plan is a plan. And if you could take all of your wisdom that you've learned over your life, that would be the lesson to your younger self, but what would be the lesson you'd want to pass on to your four kids? Be kind, because I believe more that there is a God than there's not a God. I'm not 100% on it. I pray about it all the time. I'd like to be 100%. But just in case there is,
• 1:25:48
  Just in case there is, lead your life exactly as if there is a God, because eternity is a long, long time.